Transgender in a Global Frame

Abstract

This article discusses the subtle discursive shifts which have simultaneously made transgenderism in the USA and Europe into a mark of the historically specific definitional cleaving of homosexuality from gender variance, a trendy and stylistic shift from gender androgyny within lesbian communities to gender variance within gender-queer communities, a sign of an internal split within feminism between the stabilization of the category of woman and the undermining of the coherence of the category within queer theory. At the same time, this article demonstrates how transgenderism has been installed within a ‘global gay’ system as part of the hegemony of US taxonomies—the addition of ‘T’ to the acronym ‘LGBT’ allows for the neat division and explanation of a very wide range of translocal phenomena in terms of the US model. So, how are we to understand and explain the impact of transgenderism upon not only traditional gendering but also upon queer communities and even on the ebb and flow of sexual and gender definition globally?